Former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, the characteristic leader of Türkiye’s Feb. 28, 1997 coup era, is being commemorated on the 12th anniversary of his death.
On Monday, a ceremony was held for Türkiye’s 23rd prime minister across various provinces.
Erbakan, who changed the political landscape by introducing the conservative masses to politics, died of heart failure in Ankara on Feb. 27, 2011, a day before Türkiye marked the anniversary of the so-called “postmodern coup” that forced Erbakan to resign in 1997.
Known for his devotion throughout a 42-yearlong career in politics, Erbakan had his goals quashed by three military coups and fought against all odds to uplift the voices of conservatives who had long been neglected by previous governments and repressed through secular policies, such as blacklisting and the banning of headscarves.
His attitude and ideologies were often described as “a breath of fresh air in Turkish politics.” Originally a mechanical engineer, Erbakan made his foray into politics nine years after the Turkish republic’s first coup deposed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes’s government.
After the Constitutional Court shut down his first party for “activities against secularism” in the wake of a 1971 coup, Erbakan, undaunted, staged a powerful comeback by 1973, only to be closed again in a 1980 coup that saw him barred from politics for seven years.
Erbakan made a triumphant return in 1987 by being elected as the chairperson of the Welfare Party, which his supporters founded in 1983.
Erbakan, who served as deputy prime minister in several coalition governments in the 1970s, was finally elected prime minister in the Welfare Party and True Path Party (Refahyol) government.
However, secularists once again curbed his political ambitions when his party was boosting its popularity, especially in municipalities run by his party, such as Istanbul, where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was mayor.
In 1997, amid a growing crisis between the army and the government, Erbakan stepped down from his post after generals issued an ultimatum. His Welfare Party was disbanded after the coup, and Erbakan was banned from politics for five years. Later, he took charge of the Felicity Party, but it failed to win seats in Parliament in subsequent elections.
In 2002, the already frail Erbakan was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on charges of embezzlement of party funds, a “plot,” according to his supporters, to hinder his political goals further. His sentence was commuted to house arrest. Erbakan continued engaging in politics until his death through the Felicity Party that he chaired.
A uniting figure among the country’s conservative community who were frustrated by the policies of the countless right-wing parties, Erbakan was also the mentor of numerous politicians, including Erdoğan and his predecessor Abdullah Gül, who went on to form the Justice and Development (AK) Party, which has been in power since 2002.
